


Family Business

by BelleVictoire



Category: Spooks | MI-5, The Bletchley Circle
Genre: Crosswords!, Family Secrets, Gen, Headcanon, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 01:19:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelleVictoire/pseuds/BelleVictoire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At chat with Malcolm while trying to take a normal, ordinary lunch break provides Ruth with an unexpected insight into her family legacy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Business

**Author's Note:**

> This work sprung from the discussions on Tumblr regarding the potential familial similarities between Ruth Evershed and Susan Grey. When I found out that the Government Code and Cipher School (which ran Bletchley Park) later became GCHQ, this fic just had to be written. Feedback encouraged! Hope you enjoy :)

Strolling along the Embankment, Ruth had to admit it was nice to do something normal for an hour; to blend in with the busy crowd of other, mundane, office workers out on their lunch break. Usually she took her lunch at her desk, just in case she was needed. In case she could be of any use.  And, of course, on days when Section D was saving the UK from urgent danger yet again, even a hurried sandwich eaten one-handed at her post was a luxury. Today, however, no imminent threat loomed, Harry was at meetings in Whitehall all day, and Ruth thought that perhaps, just this once, she might go out for lunch without it being a gross dereliction of duty.

It was one of those rare, glorious days of early spring with a blue sky full of puffy clouds and a treacly yellow warmth to the sunlight.  A daffodil day, her Gran would have called it. Up ahead St. Paul’s shone white and bright on the skyline, while beside her glints of sunshine played sparkling off the surface of the river.  It had seemed a crime, as she entered Thames House that morning, to contemplate spending even a minute indoors, let alone to lock oneself away all day in a windowless room behind several layers of impenetrable security.

Apparently she hadn’t been the only member of Section D to feel that way.  Malcolm looked up as her shadow fell across the crossword he was working on.

“Snap,” she said with a little waggle of the takeaway container she held, twin to the empty one lying discarded next to Malcolm on the bench.   “Mind if I join you?”

He gave her a distracted smile. “‘Course not.”

Malcolm shuffled the detritus of his lunch out of the way as ruth took the spot beside him.

“You know, I feel quite naughty, having lunch out,” she confided between bites of her shop bought wrap.  “Like I’m skyving off, which is silly, really.   Its as if I’m back at school: I keep expecting the headmaster to turn up.”

“Don’t let Harry hear you call him that,”  Malcolm chuckled.

They lapsed into silence as Malcolm succumbed to the lure of his unfinished crossword.  Ruth didn’t mind; it was a comfortable, friendly sort of quiet.  Besides,  most of the things they had to chat about were not cleared for discussion on a park bench in the middle of the Embankment.   Though, she thought with a private smile, discussing urgently confidential things seemed to be the only time she did sit by the river.  She supposed it must be safe enough - the security of anonymity, clear sightlines to spot eavesdroppers - but, none the less, she always felt uneasy discussing even the most mundane Five business in public.  “ _Careless talk costs lives_ ,”  her grandmother was always fond of reminding her.  And while that probably hadn’t been the case for the casual gossip which prompted her Gran to quote that aphorism,  it certainly was for the secrets she kept these days.  More than once Ruth had had good cause to thank her innate Grey discretion.

“You wouldn’t happen to know of an expression, 14 letters, meaning ‘Partridge affairs’ would you?”

Ruth had been so engrossed in her own thoughts that the question caught her off guard. "Pardon?".

“10 across. ‘Partridge affairs’. 14 letters.”

“Oh. Afraid I’m rubbish as crosswords. My Gran was a whiz at them, though.” She had a sudden vivid memory of the slightly old-fashioned front room of the neat suburban semi where her grandparents had lived, ornamented with a jumble of exotic knick-knacks, the legacy of year of foreign service.  The room was filled with morning sun, and her Gran’s hair was a luminous silver halo as she bent over the puzzle book.  

“ _Now Ruth darling, you can get this one:  cryptic mystery, 6 letters.”_

“She did all the most difficult ones.  Won a Daily Telegraph competition once.  Well, came in third.  She had the certificate mounted in the hall.  Said it was her greatest achievement after raising Mum and my Uncle Sam.”

“Did you know,” Malcolm began with a didactic wave of his pen, “that during the war they used to use those newspaper competitions to recruit for the cypher section?”

Ruth laughed “I hardly think my Gran was a spy, Malcolm.”  

But even as she denied it, she realized the truth.  It was so blindingly obvious, in fact, that Ruth was ashamed she hadn’t put it together earlier; all the pieces had been there.  The ingrained secrecy.  The crosswords and puzzles to keep busy. That final visit in the hospital, when Ruth had told Gran about her new job ‘doing research for the Home Office’.  Gran had beamed with a pride out of all proportion for a simple government clerical job.  She had taken Ruth’s hand in her own dry, palsied one and squeezed it lightly, which was all she could managed by that point.  “ _I knew you would never be ordinary._ ”

Gran had known, just as Ruth knew that if she checked the service record of Susan Grey it would show something different that a wartime spent filing for the Foreign Office; that an invitation to a grand tea in London hadn’t been the only prize won in that crossword competition.

“Are you alright?”  Malcolm asked, sounding concerned, and Ruth realized she had begun to cry.

“Yes, sorry.”  she dabbed at her eyes with her crumpled napkin and took a few calming breaths.  “Really miss my Gran, suddenly.”

Malcolm’s voice was full of sympathy,  “You were close.”

Ruth looked out at the sparkling water under the blue sky, at a city saved from destruction with the help of clever women in tin huts,  and smiled. “Far closer than I ever knew.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> For those who care, the crossword answers are:  
> Cryptic mystery, 6 letters: Enigma  
> Philby foe, 5 letters: Agent (Kim Philby was a famous English spy working for the Russians during the Cold War)  
> Partridge affairs, 14 letters: Family (as in The Partridge Family) business. Sorry, couldn't resist the pun ;)


End file.
